Another moment that I'm sure happens to everyone... I hope...

[wolfcaroling]

You know how sometimes, when you're feeling particularly greedy and ordering far more McDonalds than could possibly be categorized under the words "normal" or "appropriate", you pretend to be remembering an order made by a larger group of people so the spotty teenager behind the counter doesn't think you're a fat, greedy pig who represents all the

Comments

[wolfcaroling]

I gained weight because I started living off of the Kraft Dinner that Jonathan's mother supplied our apartment with in large quantities. Can you name me a diet that would have prevented that? I don't think any reliable diet involves eating nothing but KD, perogies, and McDonalds for months on end. My regaining my weight was my own fault, because I stopped eating healthy. Yes, I was depressed and I didn't do it purposefully, but if I had been eating according to weight watchers, I STILL would have gained the weight back once I tossed it out the window and went back to overeating. Like I said, before that I kept the weight off for a year no problem.

One has to take a certain amount of responsibility for one's own eating habits. There are no diets out there that keep working once you have stopped eating healthy and gone back to eating KD and McDonald's, as awesome as that would be. You have to have a certain amount of will power. As long as you eat healthy, you won't gain weight. But once you eat unhealthily, it doesn't matter whether your former diet was weight watchers or Atkins. You will STILL gain that weight back.

If someone has a tendency to gain weight easily, they have to watch what they eat for life. That's how life works. I wish that weren't true, but it is.

[wolfcaroling]

Also, bacon gorging? People think Atkins is an all-meat diet. I don't know where they get this impression.

The Atkins website says this about eating for lifetime maintenance:
"Keep eating plenty of lean protein, any kind you like: beef, lamb, chicken, turkey, fish, shellfish and a variety of vegetable proteins.

Keep consuming those good fats: olive oil, avocado, butter and the like.

Enjoy a rich variety of good carbs: high fiber vegetables and fruits, nuts, legumes, and whole grains.

Also, remember what you are staying away from: bad fats and processsed foods made with white flour and sugar with little or no fiber. "

Does that sound so different from any other maintenance diet? Where is the bad in this?

[bromache]

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I think you misinterpreted what I said. I apologize for being confusing. I wasn't trying to make fun of you or anything for gaining weight back. Just suggesting that if it was a diet that was continually going to tempt you to cheat, then it may not be the right one for you in the long-run. Trust me, I know very well how difficult it can be to eat healthy on a budget and how weight gain can be inevitable when eating the improper foods. It's where we're at right now, unfortunately.

As for the bacon-gorging comment, I admittedly have never read up on Atkins closely. I was basing my knowledge of the diet on what I observed people who were on it eating (namely, Greg and Jon). Clearly, they weren't doing it right from what you posted (though is that just the maintenance part? I only ever saw the beginning part, and it involved salads and cheese and lots of fatty meats). From what you've posted, it sounds very much like any other recommended healthy, well-balanced diet. So, go for it!

[wolfcaroling]

Yeah, my point was just that ANY long-term diet is going to tempt me to cheat, because NO long term diet has McDonalds on it, and I'm a pig.

Allow me to educate you a bit, since I don't think Jon ever went to the trouble to learn the science behind my magic diet that made him drop 15 pounds in six days :-)

Crash course on Atkins:

Sugar = bad. Most fat cells are actually made up of stored sugar. Our body doesn't prefers to use sugar than to use fat, which is basically sugar in a zip-file. That is why people end up with fat lining their veins and arteries - because the body ignores the fat if you are eating enough sugar, and instead just lets it lie around the body the same way that boxes of stuff that you haven't bothered to unpack take up room in your closet. However, if the body is deprived of sugar for long enough, it will say "fine. Be that way" and switch itself over to a fat-burning system. It takes more energy to burn fat than it does to burn sugar, but the body CAN do it if it has to.

This harks back to the days when we were hunter-gatherers. In the summer, we ate lots of fruits and grains and things, because they were available. The body stopped burning fat and instead used all that sugar, and stored away any excess sugar from these foods as body fat, to prepare for the winter. In winter, because this is before the days of canned preserves, all the fruits and grains tended to go away. We lived off of meats and nuts and used animal organs, like the liver, as our vitamin sources. Then the body would shift into fat burning mode. It used body fat, and the fat from consumed meats, to get energy instead, converting that fat to sugar for use as fuel.

The Inuit loved fat for this reason and despite the fact that pure BLUBBER was a major part of their diet, their heart disease rates were surprisingly low. In fact, since the Inuit have started following the low-fat high carb diet of most North Americans, heart disease has increased dramatically:
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2001/09/21/inuit_diet010921.html

As Corinne said, studies of Atkins have found it to actually result in LOWER levels of bad cholesterol in the blood than more traditional diets. This is because the body is switched into fat-burning winter mode, and it eats up all that extra fat instead of storing it in your arteries.

So, the first task in Atkins is to end summer for your body. You cut out fruits and grains, as well as starchy root vegetables like potatoes and carrots. You eat meat, any kind you want, and you can have cheese and eggs (high in healthy omega 3 fatty acids) and you are allowed, nay encouraged, to eat leafy green vegetables. Spinach, for example, contains all of the nutritious vitamins that whole wheat grains do - without the starches that keep your body using sugar as its primary fuel.

Day three is terrible. Your body runs out of glycogen, which is the easy-release sugar which your pancreas stores, and your body crashes. It's like "where my sugar be at, biotch??" and is still refusing to break out the precious stored fat, which your body has been hoarding like a pirate's treasure. On day four, your body says "FINE!" and starts burning fat instead. And suddenly everything gets better. Your blood sugar evens out, because your body now has a constant source of fuel - YOU. You don't need a boost of timbits or cereal to perk you up anymore. If you get hungry, you eat some fatty meat, and your body actually BURNS that fat instead of just letting it grease up your insides. You eat veggies like celery and salad to add fibre and vitamins.

[wolfcaroling]

This is called the "induction phase" and lasts two weeks. After that, you can try adding a bit more carb to your diet - things like nuts (remember how many peanuts I used to chow down on the summer i was on Atkins?) and the occasional tomato or maybe some berries. The less carb you eat, though, the faster you lose. Once again, the antioxidant properties of salad vegetables are strongly emphasized.

Once you approach your goal weight, you can start experimenting with carbs. See what you can and can't eat to continue losing weight. Once you have achieved your goal weight and know what you can handle, you take up a standard healthy diet, but keeping your critical carb level (the amount of carbs it takes to convince your body that summer is back) in mind.

Does that explain it clearly?

[wolfcaroling]

Link about Atkins being best for cholesterol and weight loss:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080717/Low_carb_080717?s_name=&no_ads=

[bromache]

Interesting!

[bromache]

Yes, that helps a lot. It's starting to make sense to me. Thank you! Still not possible for me, especially as a non-meat-eater, but I can see the science now.

[wolfcaroling]

Hypothetically you could still do Atkins vegetarian style, using vegetable proteins like Tofu instead of meat and still eating lots of dairy, but I agree it would be harder. Mostly because tofu - blaaargh.

[wolfcaroling]

http://www.ehow.com/how_8646_dr-atkins-diet.html

Doesn't look fun, but then again, I consider life not worth living if I can't have pasta and bread anyhow :-p

Still, I'm getting heavy. It must be stopped.

[bromache]

I'll check that out. :)

I'm actually just reading up on the vegetarian version of the South Beach diet, which is also low-carb apparently. The toughest part is that I try not to eat too much soy (like, only once or twice a week), 'cause it's not supposed to be too great for you to eat a lot of it (phytoestrogens and all that). And Liam had an intolerance to it, so I'm expecting this baby to be that way too. Longest seven months of my life, cutting out dairy and soy from Liam's second through ninth month. Ugh. I may have to wait longer than I'd like to start this weight loss stuff!

[wolfcaroling]

Yeah, obviously you don't want to do anything as hard core as the early phases of Atkins or South Beach (south beach is virtually identical to Atkins, especially in the early phases) while pregnant/nursing, so you have time to plan everything carefully.

They say that phase 2 of South Beach, or the Maintenance level of Atkins are okay for pregnant or nursing women, since that's basically a standard healthy diet.

[wolfcaroling]

Basically, my plan is to lose my weight, get onto maintenance, and then get pregnant. Studies show that infants born to mothers who ate high fat, high sugar diets during pregnancy are more likely to be obese, and are more likely to have difficulty making healthy food choices themselves later in life.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/101865.php
So I want to have broken my carb addiction by then!

[bromache]

Makes sense -- they do stress you eat as healthy as possible in pregnancy. But in my experience, you eat what your stomach came keep down! ;)

[grinning_dagger]

Don't knock the 'fu!

[wolfcaroling]

Tofu = gross. There's something about the texture that I can't stand. Mmm.... spongy....